Had my oldest daughter's parent-child play date. I'm not sure if it was the melancholy weather or if it was just a bad sort of day but the playdate seemed to be more straining than usual. Every year after sports day, about a month later we always have to go to school and play with the children. When they were in first, second, and third grade, we basically did the sports day event. That was good and fun and got us moving but it was always trouble because I was either pregnant or I had a small infant. Last year, I played karuta with my oldest. This year however was really troublesome. First, we had to sit through a very boring orientation telling us about her camping trip that's coming up. While it's nice to get the information in a spoken form, it was impossible for me to understand anything because it was in a giant auditorium and the microphone echoed. This meant that I sat there for about an hour not being able to understand anything and not being able to get the information that I need. All the while, I was holding my three-year-old son who was squirming about and then finally fell asleep. My sour mood turned into an absolute lemon. My legs were already numb because I have a back problem but then my arms were too because I was holding my son. The playtime this year was also really really not fun. There was a little bit of janken that was fun but then there was nothing but line dancing after. I wonder if I hate line dancing so much because whenever I was the same age as my daughter is now, I was forced to do it for about 6 months. Everyday holding sweaty hands with my classmates. I had to laugh though because whenever I looked up at all the faces of every single parent, everyone had a serious grimace on their face. Some of the parents looked downright miserable. I'm glad it's over. Let's hope next year I'll be in a better mood then maybe the events will be a little bit more entertaining. Next week is my younger daughter's. It'll be Karuta, so it should be fun and there's no long orientation so let's hope it was better than this one.